Universal

With Universal pushing R-rated comedy Please Don’t Destroy from Aug. 18 to Peacock, another R-rated movie, Strays, featuring the voices of Will Ferrell & Jamie Foxx is back-filling that date. Originally, Strays was to open on June 9, a month from now. The WGA Strike is partly the reason for Strays‘ movie; an original bawdy
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Refresh for latest…: It was just a matter of time. With estimates through Sunday, Illumination/Nintendo/Universal’s The Super Mario Bros Movie is expected to cross $1B global tomorrow, becoming the first release of 2023 to the milestone, and the fifth of the pandemic era. It is getting there in 26 days. Wahoo! The Aaron Horvath/Michael Jelenic-directed
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Eightyseven North brought a stunt dance crew and motorocycles on stage toward the finale of Universal’s CinemaCon presentation for their 2024 movie The Fall Guy. Quite often the studios here at CinemaCon keep it confined to showing off 2023 product, but Uni wanted to give exhibitors in the room something more. Following the Fast X
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“We thought we’d give you a little taste of it,” said Universal Pictures boss about Wicked, which is in production in London with Jon Chu directing and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the respective roles of Glinda and Elphaba. The rough footage, which even some Uni execs haven’t seen, showed, Elphaba getting trained by
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James Cameron climbs the ladder to cut the net for winning Deadline’s 2022 Most Valuable Blockbuster Movie Tournament after Avatar: The Way of Water cleared over a half-billion dollars in profit after all ancillaries. Given the sleeper nature of this sequel, and given the overall boom expected from this year’s global box office to $32
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While streamers typically get by on thrifty marketing budgets, pushing content largely on their menus, most motion picture studios, like Universal, still have all the superpowers in the world to blast a movie out of a canon. But here’s something to keep in mind as we detail Universal’s promo playbook below in propelling Illumination/Nintendo’s Super
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Universal Pictures, Atomic Monster and Blumhouse’s Night Swim is now opening on Jan. 5, 2024 instead of Jan. 19. That first weekend of the New Year is a highly coveted spot for horror movies. That’s where Blumhouse/Universal’s M3GAN opened to $30.4M and went on to gross $95M. Night Swim logline: No running. No diving. No
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Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament took a hiatus during the pandemic as movie theaters closed for the majority of 2020-2021 and theatrical day-and-date titles on both the big screen and studios’ respective streaming platforms became more prevalent. Coming back from that brink, the studios have largely returned to their theatrical release models and the downstream
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THURSDAY UPDATE, Refresh for latest…: With numbers now in for the 44 overseas markets that opened on Wednesday, Illumination/Nintendo/Universal’s The Super Mario Bros Movie had a more than peachy debut with $34.7M through yesterday at the international box office. Combined with Wednesday’s domestic bow, the global one-day total is $66.4M. Several milestones/records were set in
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Illumination/Nintendo/Universal’s Super Mario Bros Movie doesn’t need a mushroom to get bigger, it just organically is. Out of the gate today Wednesday, sans any Tuesday previews, the feature take of the classic game is looking at $26M, for what’s translating into a $86.2M 3-day, $127.5M Wednesday through Sunday haul. Interesting, even though its opening day
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Disney’s live-action take on The Little Mermaid has been cleared for theatrical release in China, as has Fast X — the penultimate installment in Universal’s long-running Fast & Furious action franchise. Dates are still to be set for both films in the market which has increasingly been handing out day-and-date releases for Hollywood titles even
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EXCLUSIVE: Illumination/Universal/Nintendo’s The Super Mario Bros Movie just landed on tracking this morning ahead of its Easter weekend release, and the animated film is shaping up to make at least $85M-$90M+ over its Wednesday through Sunday launch — and that’s on the conservative side. Given the fervent response by fans to trailers, it would not
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“‘Nobody likes to watch people getting eaten by lions.” Apparently this was the response by the late Sumner Redstone during his National Amusement exhibition days after he saw a screening of the 1981 Tom Skerritt lion movie, Savage Harvest, relayed to me by an exhibition source who overheard him. As funny as Redstone’s reaction was, it’s
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Universal/Illumination/Nintendo’s The Super Mario Bros Movie has become the latest Hollywood title to secure a release date in China. The big-screen spin on the iconic videogame franchise will hit Chinese cinemas on April 5, in time for Ching Ming Festival and in step with some other international markets as well as two days before the
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FRIDAY PM: Oh no, those tepid audience exits and B CinemaScore are impacting the second weekend of Disney/Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is currently seeing an OMG 71% drop with a $30M second FSS and a $7.8M second Friday, -83% (read the review). If that estimate holds, it’s worse than Thor: Love
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EXCLUSIVE: Timothy Scott Bogart’s movie Spinning Gold, about his music-producer father Neil Bogart and the iconic label Casablanca Records that he built, will hit theaters on March 31, 2023. The release and distribution will be handled by Hero Partners in partnership with Howling Wolf Films, with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment distributing across transactional home entertainment.  Neil
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The Universal/Blumhouse/Atomic Monster genre film M3GAN is hitting screens a week earlier than its original MLK weekend date, and now will be released January 6. The pic from director Gerard Johnstone and producers James Wan and Jason Blum moves onto a date where there’s Sony’s untitled True Haunting movie, and away from New Line’s House
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The over-under on Universal/Blumhouse/Miramax’s Halloween Kills for its debut weekend is $50 million at 3,800 theaters. Some even see it possibly touching $60M, and that’s with a theatrical day-and-date on Peacock. That opening alone is what all films have been averaging at the box office over the last three weekends: $55M. In 2021, Part 2
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There might be a box office surprise this weekend in Paramount’s horror movie Smile. Yes, we’re serious. The pic, from writer-director Parker Finn, was developed by Paramount Players, and the studio took a wait-and-see approach as to where would land — on Paramount+ or theatrical. Then Paramount held a test screening, and Smile played to great
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The dinosaurs have done it as Universal/Amblin’s Jurassic World Dominion crossed the $1B mark at the global box office with Thursday’s business included. It took a little while, but that shouldn’t diminish that this makes the Colin Trevorrow-directed installment, one of only three films to the milestone since the beginning of the pandemic. It is
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In the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Universal has chosen to delay the UK release of the Julia Roberts/George Clooney romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise “out of respect to the Royal Family.” Originally scheduled to release this coming Friday (September 16), the Working Title film from director Ol Parker will instead go
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“I do think the studies will get paid, like they usually do, whatever they are owed. Because we are the suppliers and that’s usually what happens,” Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said Wednesday of the Chapter 11 filing earlier in the day by Regal Cinemas’ parent Cineworld. “Those things seem to go through the same
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